57 years ago: Government spending now tops $100B

Each Monday, we turn to a day in the newspaper's history for a look at what the Editorial Board found worthy of comment. We will preserve the punctuation and capitalization of the original editorial column. Here is what we wrote on March 17, 1956:

$100 Billion in '56 ...

U.S. Department of Commerce figures show that aggregate government revenues at all levels - federal, state and local - exceeded $97 billion in 1955 for a new record.

And according to estimates made by the Institute of Life Insurance on the basis of available information, the cost of government in the United States at all levels seems certain to reach the $100 billion mark in 1956.

Last year's spending, according to the Institute, was the equivalent of more than 30 cents of every dollar of the record national income for the year and represented about $600 for every man, woman and child in the population.

All the indications are, it reports, that the trend is still upward, not only in total expenditures but in the government's "take" out of the economy as well.

A growing economy and a growing population add to the need for expanded government services, of course, but the growth of government seems to have gone far beyond those needs.

At any rate, the government at all levels does things today that the people neither expected of it nor wanted of it in days gone by.

A lot of people decry that steadily increasing dependence on government, but even more people apparently favor it. Otherwise the trend would be stopped by the government officials the people put in office.

Impressive Rise ...

One of the factors which most impressed us about the greater Wausau area's employment and payroll picture, based on annual surveys by Walter G. Roehl, executive secretary of the Wausau Chamber of Commerce, was the big rise in payrolls in the nine years covered in his report.

While employment for the plants included in the survey rose a modest 6 per cent in the 1947-1955 period (but with year to year fluctuation), total payrolls climbed about 65 per cent and average wages climbed about 56 perc cent.

Those are impressive increases.

Inflation took a cut out of those increases, of course, but most of them represent a solid gain for the workers and are of great economic and social significance to the greater Wausau area.